Changing
by Keemon
Summary: Dolls and Contractors don't feel emotions. Both Hei and Yin always believed this until...slowly, something changed. An interpretation of the events in Season 1. Rated T for mild cursing. Chapters for the OVAs and Ryuusei no Gemini may follow.


**A/N: So this is my first attempt ever at writing a short fanfic. I have no idea if it's any good or not, but if anyone wants me to, I may write another chapter or two based on the OVAs and Ryuusei no Gemini. But I have to keep writing **_**The Alchemist and the Assassin,**_** so I'll have to see how busy I am…**

**I got the idea for this fic when I was re-watching Darker than BLACK (again). I noticed that at the beginning Hei does act a lot more brutal, even if he occasionally shows emotion like in the early arcs with Nick, Havoc, and Misaki. But all those were somehow related to his sister (Nick had a little sister like him, Havoc was involved in the incident in South America, and Misaki was betrayed like he thought Amber betrayed him). It wasn't really till the Yin arc that he helped others just for the heck of it. Or at least, that's what I think.

* * *

**

Hei had always felt confused, ever since the incident in South America. He knew that some of it stemmed from the loss of his sister_ is she alive?_ and whatever had happened with Amber. But mostly, it was his new emotions after his sudden transformation into a Contractor that kept him in constant inner turmoil. Upon becoming a Contractor, his brain seemed to have been completely altered, even rewired, as if an electrician had gone to fix a wiring problem and stopped halfway through. He couldn't comprehend just _what_ he was feeling anymore. Sometimes he would almost grasp an emotion, but it would slip easily through his fingers, like water. It was all an illusion, a mistake, he eventually decided. Contractors couldn't feel. Therefore, these strange urgings to act irrationally had to be something else—or maybe he was just imagining them altogether.

So he quit trying to identify what he was feeling, and closed himself off to the part of him that insisted on acting irrationally, and to the rest of the world, with an uncaring stoic mask. And at first, it seemed to work. He could block out the irrational urges and behave as a Contractor should—to be a killing machine.

But one confusion still remained unsolved—his sister. Though it was irrational, he wanted that source of inner tumult stifled as well—to get some closure about what had happened to her. So he became a contradictory being—a Contractor with an illogical purpose.

He joined the Syndicate, an underground group that held power over nearly all the world's nations, and which had unknown motives—not that Hei cared. The Syndicate was the most powerful, far-reaching organization he could find, and if any group could lead him to his sister, it was the Syndicate. His team in the Syndicate was standard, a liaison and foot soldier for the Syndicate, another Contractor, and a Doll. Nothing special. The liaison, a human known as Huang, held the typical human bias against Contractors, the bias that Contractors were monstrous, murderous freaks. Hei couldn't agree more. He had seen what Contractors had done in South America _what he was doing now_, but he didn't care. Or at least… he didn't think he did.

* * *

Yin stared straight ahead dully as Huang gave them the details of their next mission. She understood what he was saying; she understood and would remember every word. But she kept her gaze unseeingly ahead as if she didn't even know Huang existed, as if she was deaf as well as blind. He ignored her as well, which was only befitting of a Doll. Dolls couldn't feel, Doll's couldn't act on their own, Doll's weren't human. Just shells of their former selves, practically walking corpses. She knew this, but it didn't elicit any response from her. It was just how it was, and she accepted it with stoic, robotic ease.

"So that's that," Huang told them all gruffly. Well, that is, he told Hei and Mao, the two Contractors on the team. Huang hated Contractors, but he still talked to them. Dolls like herself didn't merit something that important. She was insignificant. "And don't forget, if you don't get your asses back here by tomorrow, the Syndicate's gonna hear about it. And I'm not the one they're gonna punish."

"We know," came the quiet response from Hei. Hei was always quiet. Even when he killed, he killed people silently. Through her specter, she had seen and heard him assassinate people who screamed upon being electrocuted by him. She assumed they were screaming in pain, she knew well by now that humans did that. She could understand physical pain. But she had heard of people being in a different type of pain, pain that occurred in such instances as death of family members or being abandoned. Or even upon thinking about such things. Did the people Hei killed scream because they felt this pain Yin could not understand upon knowing they would die? Yin didn't know. She couldn't feel anything, so she would never know.

"Then get moving!" Huang barked at them. Again, he was only talking to Hei and Mao. They mattered. She didn't. They all left, and she was left with the radio in her ear and the pan of water she would use to observe the enemy. All alone. Shouldn't this make her feel that unknown pain as well? Yin had heard many things from her tobacco stand. About how one man felt the unknown pain when his wife left him. Or how one woman felt the unknown pain when she couldn't stop smoking. Or when one young child had lost her favorite toy. They called the unknown pain many things, sadness, anger, heartbreak, and loneliness, among other things. It meant nothing to Yin. She could not feel, and so she couldn't distinguish between any of them.

* * *

Hei carried out his missions as a Contractor normally would, with ruthless efficiency, but each successive mission, he found himself becoming more and more perplexed. A Doll sacrificed herself for him _it should be impossible_, a Moratorium turned into a Contractor, and Havoc, a former comrade and Contractor who had literally been a bloodthirsty killer, had somehow converted into a repentant Regressor. He couldn't help but start to think that perhaps things were not as clear-cut as they seemed. But undoubtedly, there had to be some reason behind these bizarre occurrences. The Doll had had the memory of a human for a short while. And well… Regressors had happened before, although they were rare. Regressors weren't Contractors anymore, so what did it matter if she was repentant? Contractors were monsters, and that was that. He conveniently didn't include in his assessment the fact that he had felt something… terrible...when Havoc had died. Or that he had tried to avenge her murder. It had to have been a fluke. Contractors didn't have emotions and didn't take revenge. There was no logical reasoning for it.

Then the order to infiltrate the Gate to obtain the Meteor Core had come to him. He had done so, but it hadn't been easy. The Gate seemed to… do _something_ to him. He kept seeing shadows of his sister at every corner, and he even dreamed about losing her once. Dreaming should be impossible for a Contractor. Only humans could dream, both in the literal and in the figurative sense. Contractors didn't experience those feeble daydreams that humans spoke so lovingly of as dreaming. Maybe it was just one of those strange Gate-induced incidences. He concluded that was probably what had happened when he later experienced a strange mix between a daydream and a hallucination in the middle of vacuuming a room. The Gate was messing with him. That had to be it.

But… the 'alliance' of a sort he had formed with a Gate astronomer, who had no idea he was a Contractor, was on the verge of turning illogical as well. The astronomer, Nick, was similar to Hei—he had a sister he wanted to help and he enjoyed looking at the stars. Nick also helped him out after Hei was interrogated rather roughly for a murder he didn't commit. Hei had to admit that the tangle of emotions he couldn't make sense of, which the Gate seemed to take such pleasure in manipulating, made him inclined to…trust?... this person. Maybe that was it. But he chalked it up to another effect of the Gate. Trust was illogical when you were a Contractor and everyone wanted to kill you.

His assessment proved true when Nick eventually tried to kill him. Nick had died in the process, in yet another strange Gate incident… and Hei felt something, as much as he didn't want to admit it. Some unpleasant emotion, just like when Havoc had died. Why…? It didn't make any sense._ Contractors are emotionless monsters_. He stared straight ahead, illogically not caring if someone found him. It didn't make any sense at all.

* * *

"Damn it, what's taking Hei so long?" Huang grumbled to himself as he gave Yin the package she would give to another Syndicate member when he passed by later today. He had given her the key word that the member of the Syndicate would say when he came to pick it up. "The Syndicate wants the Meteor Core _now._ He better not have gotten himself killed." Yin didn't react to this news. Of course she didn't. Huang left the shop without a backwards glance, still grumbling to himself. It was too bad he couldn't have complained to her instead of to himself.

Yin blinked as she considered this. But why would she want someone to talk her? There wasn't any reason to, not really. She couldn't even speak back properly anymore. Becoming a Doll had messed with her ability to speak; sentences only came out as brief, sometimes unintelligible, words and phrases. There was no reason to talk to anyone.

She turned her head around the room, taking in the velvet darkness she was always surrounded by. There was no reason to see anyone either. She used her observation specter when she was told, and then she could see. But she almost never used it for herself. A Doll didn't need to see for itself. Dolls only followed orders. It was very difficult for a Doll to act on its own. She was almost always in the dark.

_He better not have gotten himself killed._ Yin cocked her head slightly as she remembered what Huang had said. Hei must be in danger, more than usual. She remembered seeing Hei kill many people in the last mission as she observed his progress on Huang's orders. People from a Chinese gang. Many of them had been in pain as they had died. And some, such as that policewoman she had seen, had experienced the unknown pain. Misery, fury, heartbreak, vengeance… There was an indefinite list she defined as the unknown pain, the apparently unpleasant feelings she couldn't know.

Would Hei experience the unknown pain if he was hurt? He had seemed to, a couple of missions ago when that woman, Havoc, had been killed. His voice had been filled with that incomprehensible emotion. People on the street, in front of her little tobacco shop, had talked about how holding hands had eased the unknown pain, so she had tried to hold Hei's hand. But it didn't help. He had walked away, still in that unknown pain caused by Havoc's death. Why was everything so complicated? She couldn't understand. She was beginning to _want _to understand though. But she shouldn't even be able to want anything in the first place.

Yin closed her eyes, pretending that it was this action that caused her blindness, and not the fact that she couldn't see at all. A Doll, a useless Doll, might not need to see all the time, but she wanted to. She wanted to see everything, not just when she was ordered to use her specter, those brief snatches of contours, shades, and color that matched up wonderfully to what she could hear.

She opened her eyes, but the darkness remained. Pretending didn't change anything. The darkness would remain, and she would never be able to comprehend emotions.

But maybe she could try again. If Hei was hurt, if he was experiencing the unknown pain, maybe she could help this time.

She sent out her specter towards the Gate, searching for a pool of water in which it could re-emerge. She soon found a puddle and her specter appeared in it, but she immediately removed it as a jolt of an immense pain shot through her. She collapsed to the floor in the tobacco shop and took a shaky breath. This was the first time she had sent her specter into the Gate. Apparently it hurt to do so. Not the unknown, but the physical pain, one she could easily comprehend. But Dolls didn't care about pain. She knew so; she had been told many times. Dolls could withstand horrible treatment without breaking their uncaring expression in the slightest. She could try again. She sent out the specter again and again, until finally, she found Hei.

He looked towards at her. Yin hadn't seen Hei's face much at all over the course of being on the same team as him—he usually wore a mask during his assassinations. She half-waited for an order—after all, wasn't that the only thing Dolls were good for? But he just kept looking at her—no, at her specter—with traces of that unknown pain visible on his face. How strange.

A couple of days later, Hei had made it safely out of the Gate, Mao reported to her. Yin nodded in response, but he had already left. She stopped halfway through the nod to stare blindly at the ground. All alone in the ever-present darkness. Back to normal.

She heard the shuffling sound of someone walking up to the counter of her small cigarette stand. A customer? Or maybe the Syndicate member she was supposed to give the package to. She sat silent, waiting to hear what the person had to say.

There was the crinkling sound of something in a wrapper being placed on the counter and the soft sound of hair brushing against the low roof as the person bent down, presumably to get a better look at her. Still she waited. "Thank you," a quiet, familiar voice told her, and then the scuffing sound of footsteps against gravel told her that the person was leaving.

She sat stock-still, trying to comprehend what had just happened. Hei. Hei had come speak to her—not just on an order, but it seemed… just to give her a gift and to say 'thank you', though she didn't know what for. She thought back to what she had been told so many times that she couldn't remember when she didn't know it, back when the Syndicate was preparing her for this team—Dolls were to be ignored. They weren't worth much, being shells of humans. So—so why?

Yin shook her head. A slight breeze wrinkled the wrapper on the gift, and she remembered its existence. She reached out slowly for it and took it carefully, as if afraid it would break. It felt like…a piece of candy.

Something shifted inside of Yin, just a little bit. Maybe, just maybe… she would try talking to her team tomorrow.

* * *

Hei stared out the rain-spattered window of the train car as he got closer and closer to where Yin was. Yin had gone missing recently, and they had only just located her. Huang had told them of their orders to kill her, just in case she revealed any information to the enemy. Hei agreed as of course he should when under orders but… Yin had sent her observation specter to support him when he had been struggling with the unpleasant, irrational feeling that had come with the death of Nick. She had helped him against her 'programming', with no regard for herself. There was no use speculating about it, but he knew that as illogical as it was, he didn't want to kill her.

"_No one deserves to be treated as a Doll… That girl is crying inside!_" The impassioned words of the detective as he made his way towards where Yin was, to kill her, rang through his mind. Was she really crying inside? _Dolls can't cry_. But maybe it wasn't so unbelievable. In the short time since he had joined the Syndicate, others had helped him, even when it went against the restraints of what defined a Doll or a Contractor, so maybe… maybe it wasn't so strange or bewildering if he chose to act irrationally, as no Contractor should be able to. Others had done it.

When he found the house where Yin and an older, unknown man were hiding out, she came out into the hallway to meet him. Trusting. The tangle of emotions inside Hei twanged unpleasantly. She stared in front of her right outside the windows, unable to see him.

"Did you try to run away of your own accord?" He asked her. Maybe the man had kidnapped her, but there was the slim chance that maybe…_ maybe things aren't like they seem._

She nodded in response.

"Why?"

"I thought I felt my heart move," came the response. Such a revolutionary statement coming from a Doll, yet she said it in the Doll's trademark bland voice. Was it true?

"Why are you here? Are you her partner in crime or something?" the man with her asked suspiciously.

"Partner?" Hei repeated slowly. He paused, thinking it through. He didn't want to kill her; she had supported him when everyone else was gone, even though it should be impossible. "Yes," he responded firmly. If she was his partner, he would not kill her. He couldn't.

He had finally seen the different side of Yin. No matter what had been ingrained in him about Dolls, _this _Doll could feel. He had probably known it deep down for a while, but when he saw her cry later that night…something changed, and some of his confusion had settled. He could accept that Contractors and Dolls did, in fact, have emotions, even if he couldn't tell quite_ what_ they were yet.

He should've known that something else would come up.

Amber's reappearance soon afterwards served to remind him of his purpose, to find what had happened to Bai. But what should he do with Amber herself? What had happened in South America? Amber escaped, in any case; he hadn't been able to do anything. But still… how should he, a Contractor that could somehow feel, treat this? He didn't know.

And then there was that boy—the naïve yakuza—who had tried to run away with a Doll to save her from being sold. _"Haven't you ever had someone you'd give your life for?"_ Had he…? Did he…? The question intrigued him, and he still didn't know the answer. But he decided to act upon his newfound emotions, the entangled wires of illogical impulses he couldn't decipher. He helped them escape. Then his other supposedly anti-Contractor teammate, Huang, had changed as well. Huang had tried to help the Contractor he was in love with escape, and failed. The female Contractor, Shihoko, had died to protect him. Two escape attempts, two different results. If he had someone to run away with, what would happen?

* * *

"Move forward twenty meters," Yin told Hei monotonously. "There are two guards at the front entrance. Head to your right. Follow the road at the next turn. The first window is unlocked." It was such a strange reversal of roles. They were trusting her to _give_ orders now. Everything had changed so much.

First and foremost, she could feel. She knew she could. She had been told so many times the supposed truths about Dolls, but Hei's behavior towards her had changed everything. He had said she was his partner. Not just a tool, a _partner. _And then he had told her to make a decision. _Her_, an insignificant, disposable Doll. A Doll shouldn't be able to make a decision on its own, but she had. Hei had thought she could, so she did. She chose to stay with him, rather than go back to Finland with her piano teacher.

Ever since then, whenever she was alone in the tobacco shop, she had practiced trying to make facial expressions with her fingers that matched what she thought she was feeling. She wasn't very good yet. It was difficult to interpret the exact emotion she was feeling, and her facial muscles seemed to have forgotten how to function. But the fact that the Syndicate was wrong about Dolls, that everyone was wrong, made her feel an emotion that she knew without a doubt—happiness. It was what she felt whenever she was with Hei.

"Wait," Yin commanded suddenly as some cops she hadn't seen previously walked within her sight. She was gratified to see that Hei stopped right in his tracks. He trusted her. Someone trusted her. The joy she felt at this caused her to accidentally slipped in an assurance this time with her orders. "It's alright. They're gone."

Everything was so much better. Huang and Mao talked to her now. They paid attention to her, and maybe even respected her as a human, not a tool. And Hei… Yin thought with the warm feeling she associated with happiness as she remembered how he had put himself in danger to save her from falling debris… Hei cared about her. He might not care very much; she didn't really know. But it was enough that he would care if something happened to her. And that made Yin happier than she could remember being in a long time.

* * *

In a blur of events including Huang and Mao's death, Hei met his sister inside the Gate. He learned that, ironically, not only had she been with him the entire time, but he was still part human. Not pure Contractor. It was strange, but in a way it made sense. This was why he was different.

He finally knew what happened, but… what now? The confusion about his abnormalities and his sister's fate was gone, as he had been hoping for this entire time, but now he had no purpose. Maybe it was the human side of him, the side he now knew existed, that needed a reason. _Contractors shouldn't need one_. But those tangled mess of emotions inside him sensed the purposelessness, the lack of a reason to live, and the storm of emotions drowned him. The feeling, whatever it was, was a terrible one, so much so that he barely noticed as the Gate reflected his internal state. The previous bright place within the Gate he had stood with a solid floor beneath him suddenly gave way to a dark, swirling whirlpool. He was falling, and he couldn't bring himself to care.

* * *

Yin stood, alone in the Gate. Amber was gone. Hei had disappeared. She was all alone. Just like before.

But she didn't like it. Maybe it was from her recent development of emotions, but she couldn't bear the thought of living like she had in the past. She did not want to be alone any longer. No…she wanted to be with Hei, who had always helped her out with no reward for himself. Mao was dead, and Huang was as well. She needed Hei, and not to just have someone to be with. She wanted to be with Hei specifically, the person who had cared for her, and whom she…she paused trying to define what she felt for Hei. She didn't know quite yet. But being with Hei made her happy; she wanted to be with him. She brought her hand up in front of her and reached, as if she could somehow grab Hei from wherever he had disappeared in the Gate and pull him back.

"Hei… " her voice echoed in the misty area of the center of the Gate. "Hei. Where are you?" She reached out again, only to find she had grabbed onto someone else's hand. This wasn't Hei's hand. Hei had warm, scarred hands; hands that had led her away from danger, as he had when he had been helping the yakuza boy, Kenji, and the Doll he loved escape.

No, this wasn't Hei. The being wasn't even solid, she realized. Its touch felt like a distorted version of the silver light she had loved so much when she was younger. Moonlight. "Who are you?" Yin asked. "No…" She murmured as she pulled back. "Why am I…?" She stepped backwards, step by step, her footsteps echoing eerily. But the moonlight being followed her, matching her steps exactly. She stopped as her hands skimmed the top of the water in the fountain behind her. "Help me," she muttered. Was it to herself? Or was it to Hei? She knew the answer—Hei had always helped her, even though Dolls didn't deserve help. Maybe she had gotten too used to giving directions, but she didn't want to be alone with this moonlight being. It held such an ominous feel to it, as if something terrible would happen if she stayed with it. She just wanted to be with Hei.

She sent out her specter towards him, wherever he was in the Gate, and her eyes widened as it somehow changed, its features elongating to become humanoid. Something was wrong. "Hei. Hei!"

* * *

He fell, face-first, down the swirling dark whirlpool. He had chosen to stay as he was, part human and part Contractor. He wouldn't kill millions of people because of his internal struggles about his identity. But what would he do now? He couldn't just let the Gate weapon wipe out all the Contractors and Dolls. Why would Amber send him back to the Gate just to see everyone die again?

Then… "Hei!" Yin. He looked up, to see a light above him. He felt something. A slight relief from the crushing feelings from before. _Hope? _Something whispered inside of him.

"Yin!" he yelled back.

"Don't leave me all alone!" Yin's voice begged him brokenly.

For a fraction of a second, all he could feel was shock. _How is it possible? A Doll, no matter what, shouldn't be able to feel to this extent._ But in the next breath, he could feel the terrible swarm of emotions dissipating. He had a purpose again. Yin needed him. She wasn't a normal Doll, he had already realized that long ago. She could feel, and he would have to learn to recognize that all the information about Dolls and Contractors that had been drilled into him for years and years was wrong. Maybe her strange behavior would add to the internal confusion that had plagued him since he had become a Contractor, but being with her was far worth any inner turmoil her she would cause him. He wouldn't be alone any longer; he would have a reason to live.

He reached out, and Yin's specter grabbed his hand, bringing him back to the Gate, which would soon be destroyed, killing every Contractor, every supposedly emotionless killing machine, along with it. There was nothing he could do.

_No,_ the feeling he could now identify as hope told him._ There's another choice besides the ones you've been offered._

He hid a smile as Yin brought him back so that he could choose the third, previously unseen option. It was strange, but fitting. When the emotion 'hope' spoke to him, it spoke in the voice of Yin.


End file.
